Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Math Lessons from William D. Cohan

In author William D. Cohan’s publicity tour, by far the most
disturbing false statements he’s made have related to former
SANE-nurse-in-training Tara Levicy. Cohan’s assertion that he was the first
person to reveal the contents of the Levicy report is demonstrably false, and
his recent assertion about what the report contains is similarly false.

But if the Levicy material is Cohan’s most malicious fabrication, his recent comments about the book’s treatment of Mike Nifong are
the most amusing. Here’s what he told NewYork: “It’s a 600-page book; 580 pages of it
are a condemnation of [Nifong’s] behavior and his decisions and his judgements
along the way.”

Cohan’s book actually contains
614 pages of text, many of which don’t deal with Nifong at all; for the sake of
argument, translate his New York comment
to a claim that 95 percent of the book’s discussion of Nifong represents “a
condemnation of [Nifong’s] behavior and his decisions and his judgements along
the way.”

Nifong references in the
index (presumably prepared by Cohan or under Cohan’s direction) do not
substantiate Cohan’s claim. I should note that the index is less-than-perfect;
it’s almost as if six or seven paragraphs, scattered throughout the text, were
removed after the index was prepared, so page numbers in the index are often
one page (or very late in the book two pages) off. But here’s a sampling—not much
evidence of the 95 percent total, or anything close to that.

pp. 450-455: commentators
criticizing Nifong after dropping of rape charges; no comment of any type from
Cohan

pp. 470-2: Nifong, wholly
without pushback from Cohan, expressing his “something happened” belief and
discussing the Japanese-rape-club theory. An obvious section for a “serious investigative
journalist” to have expressed skepticism about his protagonist.

pp. 510-512: Nifong speaking,
unrebutted, about his feelings on the Roy Cooper exoneration announcement, with
Nifong making critical comments about Cooper.

pp. 545-580: Nifong State Bar
proceedings and criminal contempt trial [Nothing in these 36 pages features
Cohan saying anything negative about Nifong. Indeed, just the reverse: Cohan
hails Nifong for his “cogent” argument about why he didn’t turn over the exculpatory
DNA tests, and frames the contempt case as a victory for Nifong since the rogue
prosecutor only got a day in jail. These pages also contain several passages in
which Nifong (unrebutted, and with Cohan not even attempting to interview the
rogue ex-prosecutor’s targets) attacks the integrity of those who disciplined
him, Lane Williamson and Osmond Smith, or bizarrely accuses Reade Seligmann of
perjury. The section does contain people saying negative things about Nifong,
but often with snide remarks from Cohan, such as defense attorneys crowing or
David Evans not testifying publicly about his son’s alleged DNA match.]

pp. 591-592: sympathetic
portrayal of Nifong declaring bankruptcy with Nifong unrebutted fretting about
the state not paying his legal expenses.

p. 614: gushing tribute to
Nifong as of 2013.

A general note. Items with negative remarks about Nifong almost always come from other people, either without comment from Cohan or with Cohan casting aspersions on the figures (such as defense attorneys) making the remarks. And the two longest uninterrupted sections (the Nifong intro and the State Bar/contempt trial) feature (a) fawning praise and (b) Cohan serving as a member of the Nifong defense team.

I’m not a mathematician, but the above listing doesn’t look like
95 percent “condemnation of [Nifong’s] behavior
and his decisions and his judgements along the way” to me. Maybe author Cohan
is a practitioner of the new math?

10 comments:

Some have suggested that Cohan is hoping for a movie deal, which is certainly believable because he is in it for the movie with no regard for the truth. But how does a movie deal work when much of the Nifong-as-martyr story is told by Nifong to Cohan. If a movie producer hires an actor to say those things (e.g., Lane Williamson wrote his speech the night before) won't the producer be guilty of libel?

After checking with my lawyer friends, a movie producer could be held libelous if an actor were to say the things that Nifong told Cohan. Makes a movie deal less likely. Could get around the libel by watering down the comments, but then it waters down the punch of the story.

I'm reading the book right now. Nifong doesn't appear at all until almost page 80 and is not present for most or all of the 30-plus pages of the chapter on "The New Duke," so for over 100 pages of the book he is not involved in the narrative at all. That further shows how Cohan's "580 pages of condemnation" claim is really silly.

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I am from Higgins Beach, in Scarborough, Maine, six miles south of Portland. After spending five years as track announcer at Scarborough Downs, I left to study fulltime in graduate school, where my advisor was Akira Iriye. I have a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard, and an M.A. from the University of Chicago. At Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, I teach classes in 20th century US political, constitutional, and diplomatic history; in 2007-8, I was Fulbright Distinguished Chair for the Humanities at Tel Aviv University.

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